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6-Day Week Solar Calendar with common Muslim/Christian weekend
The case for the 6-day week Perhaps you’re the kind of person who wants to help the environment and boost the economy at the same time. No? Well, then maybe you have a job, or go to school, or have a family member who does. Either way, you’ll want to stay with me on this. As we all know, there are some big problems with the current calendar, the so-called Gregorian calendar. It’s confusingly irregular, it hasn’t been updated since long before the Industrial Revolution, and it is just not designed to meet the needs of modern society. All the calendar’s shortcomings could be fixed with one fundamental change based on one simple idea: go to a six-day week composed of four weekdays and a regular 2-day weekend. There’s been talk about a “4-day workweek” for as long as I can remember, and we hear it mentioned a lot nowadays as a way to deal with high gas prices and employment concerns. But let’s face it, it’s just not going to happen. Not as long as a week is seven days long, that is. Nobody’s going to go for giving people a three-day weekend every single week. In economic terms, that’s just not sustainable. But what if the week was six days long? What if we were to eliminate a weekday (say, Tuesday) in order to formulate a 6-day week? The 4-day workweek would then be institutionalized for everyone’s benefit, but the weekend doesn’t change! While we’re at it, I suggest we go ahead and address the irregular-month problem at the same time. The improved calendar would still have 12 months, only we’d make each month 30 or 31 days long. Days and years are based on regularly recurring astronomical events. There’s no changing the length of a year or a day. Weeks and months, however, are arbitrary groupings of days within the year. The month is only loosely based on one full cycle of the moon, and the week is just as arbitrary, scientifically speaking. Because weeks and months are man-made demarcations of time, they are things that can be freely messed with. We haven’t messed with weeks and months for a long time, but we could. There you go. There’s your 6-day week and your 4-day workweek. There’s your new-style months with 30 or 31 days, 5 weeks, and 5 weekends in every single month. There will be 240 weekdays, 60 Saturdays, and 60 Sundays within each year.Beyond the symmetry and intrinsic appeal, the most obvious benefit from the new calendar would be the accelerated work week and increase in leisure time. The weekend would come around sooner every single week, and there would be 60 weekends per year, not 52. Any weekday could be eliminated, but Tuesday is best because it addresses the problem of having two “T” days in the week, while retaining the heightened weekend anticipation levels associated with Thursday. Mondays and Fridays will keep their current cultural characteristics as the beginning and end of the workweek, and Wednesday would still be “hump-day” since the workweek is already half over after the first two days. We’ve learned to live with the crazy relationship between calendar dates and days of the week, but all that complexity has been totally unnecessary. We don’t have to live that way anymore. As shown on the 6-Day Week Solar Calendar, the 1st of any month is a Monday, and the 6th, 12th, and 30th, for example, are Sundays. Who’d be for the new calendar? Well, workers, students, and families would certainly benefit from the shortened workweek and extra weekends. The travel and recreation industry would be all for it. The uniformity of the months would make scheduling and accounting tasks much easier. Business and commerce would realize huge benefits from all this regularity and from improvements in employee health and morale. We can also predict, with considerable confidence, that kids will immediately do a lot better in school. Aren’t more frequently repeated lessons better for learning things than are less-frequent, longer lessons? Of course they are. Who’d be against the idea? Some employers might have a knee jerk reaction to the idea of their employees working fewer days a year. This is to be expected, but they’d come around if they saw that their attitude wasn’t good for their image or their bottom line. Corporations might argue that we should adopt an 8.5 hour workday along with the new calendar. That way, they might say, total hours worked in a year would be almost exactly the same as now. While many people would consider this a fair trade-off for all those additional days off, I’d rather not complicate our simple proposal with considerations that confuse the issue and threaten so time-honored a tradition as the 8-hour day. I suppose some fundamentalist religious groups would be hesitant to just up and eliminate the 7-day week. Things could get sticky if we run into strong objections based on the verbal literalism of the Old Testament. But remember: 60 weeks instead of 52 means 60 Sabbath Days instead of 52. I think we’ll be able to focus on that as a strong selling point. Religious organizations will certainly approve of the family friendliness and social welfare benefits resulting from the 4-day workweek. Also, because people would now have more time to stop and smell the roses, the 6-day week could actually be the impetus for a worldwide spiritual renewal. They might not see it at first, but the world’s religions would surely benefit from the change to a 6-day week. Further description 1st day of the year New Year falls either on 21st or 22nd December of Gregorian Calendar. Exact rule for choosing 1st day of the year is the following: moment of Southern Solstice in New UTCNew UTC = UTC + 45min. I propose to change prime meridian to the meridian 11°07'54.12 which is antipode of middle point between easternmost point of Asia and westernmost point of NorthAmerica. This prime meridian is a more precise version of . time must be as close as possible to the minute zero of the New Year in New Calendar. This means that if S. Solstice occurs before 12:00 (noon) on December 21, then December 21 is the 1st day of New Calendar; if S. Solstice occurs after 12:00 (noon) on December 21 (or in early hours of December 22) then 22nd of December is the first day of NewYear. Leap year The rule of leap year is not mathematical, but based on astronomical observation. The year is a leap when number of days between S. Solstice that marks its begging and S.Solstice that marks the beginning of the next year equals to 366 days. (see rule for 1st day of the year above). But still, leap years will occur once in 4 (rarely once in 5) years with no significant difference from Gregorian Calendar, however order of leap years may vary from Gregorian calendar. (For example year 2013 is a leap year in New Calendar). Leap day is April 31. Structure of the calendar Year is divided in 12 months, each month having 30 or 31 days. Months having 31 days are: May, June, July, August and September. The reason for choosing these months is because of unequal time length of each season due to . (For example time length from S. Solstice to Northward Equinox is shorter than 1/4 of the year). Look at the picture on the right side for better understanding. Each month is divided in 5 weeks having 6 days each. So there are 4 working days and 2 weekend days. First day of the week is Sunday, last day of the week is Saturday. 31st day of any month is not a part of any weekday and is a non-working day. There some reasons for choosing Sunday as the first day of the week and not Monday. One of the reasons is that astronomical events like Solstices and Equinoxes which are celebrated in many cultures, almost always fall on the last or first day of the month. So Saturday being last day of the month (30/31) and Sunday being first day will ensure that these kind of holidays fall on a non-working day. This also ensures that 31st day of each month falls between Saturday and Sunday (so no one will dare to ask you to go to work that day ;) ). Another small bonus is the fact that start of the each month if being celebrated (or connected to start of a season or any kind of other national event) is a non-working day. Each month corresponds almost exactly to one astrological sign – April to Aries, May to Taurus and so on. Only few signs don’t correspond exactly to one month but the difference is not bigger than one day in any case. (This difference occurs because of irregularity of current Gregorian Calendar, so it can be easily ignored). Holidays Holidays differ from country to country, so they are not highlighted in this calendar. One worldwide holiday would be New Year, this is why days from January 2 to January 5 are highlighted as holidays. In this way we get a nice 8 day-New-Year-holiday each year (from December 30 to January 7). Christmas which is December 25th in Gregorian Calendar, will fall on January 4 or 5 in New Calendar, so it will be within this 8 day-New-Year-holiday too. So NewYear and Christmas will be celebrated within same 8-day long holiday, (but New Year being celebrated before Christmas). Because of reduced number of working days in New Calendar compared to Gregorian Calendar it is recommended that national holidays to be reassigned to non-working days, thus not creating any extra non-working days. Names of the months and year number It is up to each country to choose names for each month. It can be present month names (January–December), national month names, or even zodiac sign names which will correspond for each month in this Calendar. Year number could remain the same in order to not create further confusion. Conversion from Gregorian Calendar to 6-Day Week Solar Calendar With the availability of modern day software it would be no problem to convert all the dates from Gregorian Calendar to New Calendar dates. All major dates and birthdays would be celebrated on the date corresponding to that date of Gregorian Calendar in New Calendar. (For example my birthday is November 13 in Gregorian Calendar which corresponds to November 22 in New Calendar, so I will celebrate my birthday on November 22 in New Calendar). Recapitulating benefits As we can see the benefits from using new calendar are overwhelming. This calendar uses nice numbers – 12 months per year means that these months can be divided in 4 quarters (which is not possible in alternative calendars which have 13 months). Months have 30 or 31 days (no more February with 28 days). Each week has even number of days which is beneficial for scheduling issues. For example a person can schedule his gym program in order to go to gym exactly once in 2 days - Monday/Thursday/Saturday. The benefit for accounting issues would be the fact that each month (and quarter) has same number of working and weekend days. This calendar is in harmony with astrological events. (For example day length will start to increase from January 1 and will continue to increase till June 31). No new paper calendars have to be printed each year because order of days does not change from year to year. All holidays and activities can be planned with no need to modify them each year. In conclusion, this calendar resolves a number of issues of current Gregorian Calendar # It is astrologically precise being in harmony with Solstice and Equinox dates # Even number of days in week, same number of weeks, workdays and weekends in each month and quarter # Standardized months would mean that order of days does not change from year to year Implementation issues The biggest and almost only real obstacle for implementation of this calendar can be the need to break continuous use of a seven-day week. Some conservative religious organizations and people may be against calendar reform due to this reason. But as it was mentioned above we will have 60 Fridays and 60 Sundays per year for Muslims and Christians (instead of 52) if we implement this calendar reform. Another minor disadvantage can be the time needed for adaption which is valid for any change. But as it was mentioned above the availability of modern day software can diminish these difficulties. Further, simplicity and advantages of the New Calendar will make people to get used with it, the New Calendar having almost no other disadvantage. I have used text from www.6dayweek.org site in the first paragraph '''THE CASE FOR THE 6-DAY WEEK'''. Category:Proposed calendars Category:Reformed Gregorian calendars Category:6-day week Category:Week starts Sunday Category:Astronomic leap rule